by Jay Shankar Prasad Nirala

1. Class 9th
English
The Last Leaf

2. Explanation Sue and Johnsy were two young artists.
They lived together in a small flat. It was
situated on the third storey of an old
house.
Johnsy fell seriously ill in November. She
had pneumonia. Sue was worried. She
sent for the doctor. But the doctor told
Sue that Johnsy had lost the will to live.
Medicines will not help her.

3. Sue tried her best to make Johnsy to take interest in
things around her. She talked about clothes and
fashions. Sue brought her drawing-board into
Johnsy’s room and started painting. She also
whistled while painting.

4. Johnsy looked at an ivy creeper outside on the wall. It
was shedding its leaves because it was autumn. Johnsy
was counting backwards from twelve onwards. Sue asked
what it was all about. Johnsy told her that she would die
with the falling of the last leaf. It would happen in three
days. Sue called it nonsense. She also told her that she
would be all right soon. But it had no effect on Johnsy.

5. Behrman was an old painter. He lived on the ground floor.
He was sixty-years old. He had a dream that one day he
would paint a masterpiece. But he had no success so far.
Sue told Behrman about Johnsy’s strange fancy. Both he
and Sue went to Johnsy’s room. Johnsy was sleeping.
They saw that the ivy creeper had only one leaf left on it.
It was raining. It seemed that the last leaf would fall any
time.

6. Johnsy awoke from her sleep. She looked out of
the window. She looked at the last leaf. She asked
Sue to look at it. It was green and healthy. Johnsy
looked at the leaf every hour. But it didn’t fall even
in the stormy evening. This revived a will to live in
Johnsy.

7. Johnsy accused herself. She called Sue. She
admitted before her that she had been a bad girl.
She told Sue that she was very wicked. The last
leaf had shown her that. Now she felt that it was
a sin to want to die. She then asked for a mirror.
She had lots of hot soup also.

8. Next morning Sue told Johnsy about Behrman. Behrman
was ill for only two days. The guard found him on his bed.
His clothes and shoes were wet. He was shivering in the
stormy night. Hfe had painted the last leaf on the wall in
that night. He had caught pneumonia and died. Sue asked
her if she hadn’t wondered why the leaf had not fluttered.
She told her that the last leaf was Behrman’s masterpiece.
He painted it the night the last leaf fell.

9. The End